Irishman Conor McGregor became the biggest star in the sport of mixed martial arts while claiming the Ultimate Fighting Championship's featherweight and lightweight titles.

Liam Neeson is an Irish actor known for his leading-man roles in dramas like 'Schindler's List' and action films like 'Taken.'

Irish writer Bram Stoker is best known for authoring the classic horror novel Dracula (1897).

C.S. Lewis was a prolific Irish writer and scholar best known for his 'Chronicles of Narnia' fantasy series and his pro-Christian texts.

James Joyce was an Irish, modernist writer who wrote in a ground-breaking style that was known both for its complexity and explicit content.

U2 frontman Bono told ‘Rolling Stone’ the inspiration for his most recent album came from a near-death experience, offering no further details. He also criticized current music and said hip-hop is “the only place for young male anger at the moment.”

Author Oscar Wilde was known for his acclaimed works including The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as his brilliant wit, flamboyant style and infamous imprisonment for homosexuality.

Mary Harris Jones (aka "Mother Jones") was a union activist. She founded the Social Democratic Party, and helped establish the Industrial Workers of the World.

William Butler Yeats was one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.

Maureen O'Hara was an Irish-born actress who was billed alongside Hollywood's leading men in a slew of swashbuckling features in the 1940s.

20th century Irish novelist, playwright and poet Samuel Beckett penned the play Waiting for Godot. In 1969, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

With her signature shaved head, Sinead O'Connor emerged in the '90s with a powerful voice and a big hit, 'Nothing Compares 2 U,' along with a fair share of controversy.

Jonathan Swift was an Irish author and satirist. Best known for writing Gulliver's Travels, he was dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Irish-born British explorer who was a principal figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Artist Francis Bacon is best known for his post-World War II paintings, in which he represented the human face and figure in an expressive, often grotesque style.

Niall Horan is best known as the only Irish-born member of the boy band One Direction.

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote more than 60 plays during his lifetime and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.

Seamus Heaney was a renowned Irish poet and professor who won the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.